Thieves help selves to PCs from Office for Digital Inclusion

The UK.gov's digi-quango, the Office for Digital Inclusion, has lived up to its name by distributing a whole office of PCs to underprivileged people without even trying.

The ODI's job is to close the digital divide and force people onto the web, even if they don't want to.

Staff at the fledgling quango apparently turned up to work this morning to find their office stripped bare of PCs, The Telegraph reports.

The shocking news was quickly relayed to the world at large by the UK's recently appointed digital tsar, Martha Lane Fox, via her Twitter feed. She presumably keeps her digital devices about her person, or works from home.

"O bloody hell the #digitalinclusion office has been broken into and all computers taken :((" Lane Fox wailed, according to The Telegraph, although the tweet in question appears to have since evaporated.

We rushed to the Taskforce's webpage, but alas, this doesn't seem to be exist - surely the scamps haven't taken that as well.

The raid couldn't have happened at a worse time. Chancellor Alistair Darling is today pulling in government ministers to shake them down for potential spending cuts. Let's hope Digital Inclusion has up-to-date insurance.

We called the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which has responsiblity for ODI. They said they were "investigating" the theft.®